Polymath, visionary and indefatigable change agent. Founder of Polymathica, a global community of intellectual sophistication, The Polymathic Institute, which promotes polymathic research, education, careers and lifestyles, The Polymath, a weekly PDF magazine of erudite analysis and commentary. Pages describe my original work.

The Transformation

Between 2020 and
2050 the world will undergo the most profound transformation in
history. It is a classic 'good news, bad news' scenario

A True Golden Age Will Emerge Around 2025

With
the implementation of advanced robotics and expert systems, household
incomes will explode with the median exceeding 600,000 2015USD. The
concept of organic demand constraints will come to dominate Economics.

Exploding incomes will push whole populations up Maslow's Hierarchy, causing the emergence of numerous Cultures of Affluence
that will emphasize issues of self-esteem, self-actualization, personal
development, aesthetics, spirituality and social justice. Cultural, political
and social discourse will evolve away from a preoccupation with
satisfying the basic needs of life to a pursuit of a finely crafted life.

The implementation of advanced robotic systems will result in an Age of Boutique Everything.
From homes to automobiles to furniture to clothes to housewares and
more, everything will be custom designed and custom fabricated to
uniquely express the personality of the owner. This will result in almost all production to be done via 3D printing and other flexible fabrication technologies. Haute and bespoke will
enter the mainstream lexicon. 'Designer' will become one of the
largest, if not the largest, career categories.

The Death of Capitalism, through the emergence of Enterprise Networksand
the ascendance of non-financial valuation, will allow new enterprises,
whether engaged in commerce, philanthropy, education, the arts or
community development, to find access to the financial, intellectual
and human resources they need for complete expression. Owner-Operators
will rise to dominance as the remote and passive investor class,
characterized by the large and active secondary equity markets, fades in
significance.

Armed with high incomes and live anywhere options,
much, if not most, of the population will move out of the aging and
antiquated Industrial Age cities to design, build and occupy shining
new Microstates that are specifically designed to
accommodate the values and lifestyle preferences of one of the Cultures
of Affluence. These villages will aggregate in concept space to form
global intertwined cultures and geographically will create multicultural
networks that will function as urban agglomerations.

The emergence of exciting new energy technologies,
primarily enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), Liquid Floride Thorium
Reactors (LFTR) and Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), will usher
in an age of essentially limitless energy, not "almost free", but at a
reasonable price. The world will slowly transition, in a 'soft
landing' that will take place between 2020 to 2050, from an oil based
economy to an electricity economy. Concerns over anthropogenic climate
change will subside.

Accelerating understanding of genetics, human physiology and the biochemical basis of aging will lead to an acceleration in lifespans toward a likely asymtote at about 100 years with a standard deviation of about 10 years. While extreme life extension is possible in the 21st century, it is more likely a 22nd century phenomenon.

New technologies in robotics, genetics and nanotechnologies will result in the Defarming of The Planet
as we move to robotic manufacturing of foodstuffs. Food will become
plentiful, reliable and humanely produced. With food primarily grown
in artificial environments, few agricultural products will be remotely
grown. The planet will revert to natural preserves and human designed,
robotically tended, biodiverse parks.

At last, Humankind will, near the end of the Transformation, begin a Solar Diaspora,
with colonies on planets, the moon, in the asteroids and at Lagrange
points. This is relevant because, in combination with the inverse
relationship between fertility and GDP per capita, concerns about the
carrying capacity of the planet will begin to subside.

But First, The Industrial Age Apocalypse

History may very well consider these events, as here the term is coined, The Four Horsemen of the Industrial Age Apocalypse. Together they will destroy the social, cultural, economic and political infrastructure of the Industrial Age civilization.

Driven by
advanced robotics and expert systems, technology will eliminate jobs
faster than economic growth can add them, leading to technologicalunemployment rates that could exceed 20% by the early 2020's.
Nearly every job category will either disappear or be transformed
beyond recognition. Many people who apparently don't think it will
apply to them are just plain wrong. Drivers, clerks, doctors,
accountants, programmers, lawyers, teachers.. everywhere you turn, many
job categories will simply disappear, while most of those that remain
will experience greatly falling demand as a percent of the workforce.

America is headed for a divorce and Europe is not far behind.
The technologies and forces of the Information Age will continue to
push cultural identity and isolation to a tipping point, past which
reconciliation is no longer possible. Simultaneously, the
globalization of internet based groups and multinational career tracks
will greatly weaken the sense of national identity. As unemployment
skyrockets and a growing Knowledge Class continues to enjoy significant
increases in income, the current angry protests over income and wealth
disparity could lead to riots which could, if not resolved, lead to
insurrection.

The growing Knowledge Class, possessing exploding incomes and a Live
Anywhere, will move out of the Industrial Age urban
centers for more commodious locales. The large Northern metropolitan
areas whose populations have already stabilized will begin to lose
population, falling to 50% or less of their 2015 levels by 2050. In
other words, for these cities, the housing bust is permanent
and many of their residents are more or less permanently 'under
water.' In the end, the Industrial Age cities, no longer facilitative
of Information Age lifestyles, will simply die.

The large, hierarchical, publicly traded, multinational corporation
is an artifact of the High Industrial Age. It is too inflexible and
so fundamentally at odds with the notions of The Cultures of
Affluence and The Age of Boutique Everything that it cannot survive.
It provides neither the distributed internal decision making mechanisms
to react quickly and correctly to rapidly changing market conditions nor
the investment instruments that will reflect the preference for early
round financing that will be required in the Information Age. It will also result in the death of capitalism and central monetary structures.

It is against this grand sweep
of events that entrepreneurs, technologists, intellectuals, creatives,
visionaries and investors must develop and execute effective
educational, career and lifestyle strategies. It will be far from
easy. However, the rewards, upon success, will be unprecedented.

5 comments:

Fascinating Indeed. The last part is disturbing. Human nature being what it is, this could lead to demagogic leaders ascending into positions of governance even in developed nations. The mischief from this happening could push humanity into even more tragic civil and international wars. This would waste both human and material resources and lead to accelerated rates of poverty.

I will not disagree with your concern, though I think the risk is small. I more fear that popular movements, such as the minimum income guarantee, will create permanent solutions to short term problems.

I cannot overstate the importance of how the Cultures of Affluence will change the number, scale and diversity of sovereign communities. The Information Age will definitely be searching for one size fits all solutions.

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Fundable.com for many this will be the best crowdfunding platform for equity offerings. Their charge is $179 per month. Of course, the payment processing fee of 3.2% to 3.7% is extra. Still, a three month, $500,000 offering will only have a total cost of around $18,000 to $20,000 far below the 9% to 10% of most platforms. Of course, like all equity funding sites, you will need to bring most of the investors yourself. That is where P.E.N. comes in.

My Quotes

From time to time I post something that deserves more than ephemeral exposure. When that happens, I post it here.

Career Advice

You can't earn a living telling people how things are or how they will be. You earn a living by feeding their confirmation bias. That is not a career to which one should aspire.

On Fools

I really have attempted to abide by the apostolic admonition to suffer fools gladly. However, in the end, there were just too many of them.

On Being Human

I was asked, 'In what way does human intellect differ from other animals in kind and not just in degree?' I answered, 'Only humans can ask that question.'

On Opinions

Those who say, 'That's just my opinion' rarely mean it. Those who say, 'That's just your opinion' almost always do.

IQ in Perspective

A guy once quoted to me, 'When a wise man points at a star the fool looks at his finger.'
I replied, 'True. But so does my dog and I love her dearly.
Let's not overly weigh intelligence in our assessments of worth.'

The First Principle of Information Age Political Philosophy

No person should be required to live under a body of laws, programs and policies that they consider to be fundamentally unjust.

How Markets Really Work

Perception is reality...until reality steps in and says, 'OK, enough!!!'

On the Mainstream News

Pitting a Left Wing lunatic against a Right Wing lunatic gets you a whole lot of pyrotechnics but absolutely no useful insights. You can't average them and find yourself in a defensible middle.

Knowing the Future

There has been no time in the last 200 years when the world thirty years hence was generally believable. Therefore, if someone tells you what the world will be like in thirty years and it seems reasonable, history says that they are wrong.

Make a Difference

I am interested in what you have done, what you are doing and what you will do. I am supremely indifferent to what you could do, but won't. Consequently, I don't care very much about your IQ.